Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke revealed last years’ road deaths in an announcement this week and reported on in the Malay Mail.
A total of 6,643 people died on the roads during the course of 2023. Two thirds of which were bikers. In total, there was almost 600,000 reported accidents across the nation with a staggering 173,000 in Selangor alone. What they are not telling us is how many citizens suffered life changing injuries.
To counter this, he has told the police to release road death figures daily in much the same way that the Covid death toll was released so that the public will realise what a serious matter this is. Loke, who is also the chairman of the cabinet committee on road safety and congestion, said that the government will also implement several initiatives to reduce the rate of accidents.
Strangely though, two respected news outlets, Malaysiakini and The Star, have reported numbers far in excess of those from the Minister of Transport. They say that there were 12,417 fatalities. But in a way, the discrepancy doesn’t matter, either number is completely unacceptable.
I was talking with some of my friends last night and of course I was fact checked and proven correct and then we started to compare figures on other countries, for instance in the UK there were but 1,633 deaths of which 319 were bikers in the same period.
But I do not live in the UK, so I don’t really care about any comparison, I live in KL, I regularly drive in Selangor, this is where my kid’s cycle, my wife drives, we all walk beside busy streets. I care about my family and my friend’s safety; we need to fix this.
This is not a new problem; we have written about this before on Automology. If my route to work or home every day is a microcosm of Malaysia’s driving habits then there is one obvious solution. Take all the small bikes off the road immediately and only allow them back on the roads after the riders have all been through a driver re-education program.
Then enforce the rules.
The behaviour of bikers is absolutely tragic. They ignore all the rules.
Just last night on my way home there was an ambulance loading up one biker whilst a second one lay in the road covered by a sheet, presumably dead. Most nights there will be three or four enforcement officers standing at one end of the my route to and from work idly chatting instead of patrolling the road and stopping all of the illegal right turns that motorists make.
This may not be such an unreasonable idea. Just think: a Boeing 737 holds up to 215 passengers. So, just taking the lower number given by Loke, the death toll on Malaysian roads is equivalent to 30 737s falling out of the sky.
If this happened, there is no way in the world any airline would be allowed to fly them. The question is then why do we allow our nearest and dearest to climb on board a bike knowing that they are not safe?
